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Slashdot Asks: Is Paperless Office a Dream? (betanews.com)
A new report by Danwood, which surveyed 1,000 office workers, almost half said that they print something every day and 84 percent said printing things on paper at work was an "important aspect of work." In the past, we have seen a trend growing at many workplaces where things are moving increasingly digital, implying strongly that our reliance on paper must be reducing as a result. From a report: Danwood even cites a recent IDC research which says 49 percent of business expect their print volumes to increase over the next two years. Eight in ten (80 percent) of respondents say they need paper documents to get their job done. "Despite a move to digitization, organizations remain reliant on print", says Danwood CEO Wes Mulligan. "Businesses are mindful of unnecessary waste when it comes to physical documents, but print and digital will continue to coexist in today's organizations. The easiest way to strike a balance is to look at ways that you can better integrate paper and digital processes to have a real impact on efficiency, productivity and cost reduction."What do you guys think? Will we ever hit a stage where paper will have a minimal footprint, if at all, at workplaces?
Update: Reader argStyopa shares his views on why paper is here to stay, and for good: (1) Paper is portable and readable in all circumstances. I don't need to fire up a reader, connect to Wi-Fi, turn on a laptop, whatever: here's your piece of paper, read it.
(2) Paper is durable and fixed-format: if I put a paper in a file and come back 10 or even 100 years later, barring catastrophe, it'll still be there. The vagaries of non-cloud storage, and (for the cloud) the evolution of e-storage and e-doc formats means that even if I HAVE the file, I might not be able to read/open it. I have enough trouble opening now 25-year-old docs from my college days plunking on a MacSE.
(3) It's harder to edit paper: simply put, e-docs are easier to fake, generally.
Update: Reader argStyopa shares his views on why paper is here to stay, and for good: (1) Paper is portable and readable in all circumstances. I don't need to fire up a reader, connect to Wi-Fi, turn on a laptop, whatever: here's your piece of paper, read it.
(2) Paper is durable and fixed-format: if I put a paper in a file and come back 10 or even 100 years later, barring catastrophe, it'll still be there. The vagaries of non-cloud storage, and (for the cloud) the evolution of e-storage and e-doc formats means that even if I HAVE the file, I might not be able to read/open it. I have enough trouble opening now 25-year-old docs from my college days plunking on a MacSE.
(3) It's harder to edit paper: simply put, e-docs are easier to fake, generally.
I think the paperless office is pointless. Sometimes physical paper cannot be replaced, and the convenience cannot be matched.
Look you just need to know how to use the shells. That's it.
And stop swearing at the auto-ticket machine. It's running out of slips to print on.
The only thing we regularly print is shipping documents and invoices for customers that don't have electronic invoice acceptance. Outside of these items, maybe... 1-5 pages per month are printed?
All incoming paper documents are scanned and shredded.
"I don't print stuff, so there's no way anyone anywhere could possibly need to print either."
TSIA.
Since I need to add more to satisfy the /. posting god, my point is that
1) paper is portable and readable in all circumstances. I don't need to fire up a reader, connect to wifi, turn on laptop, whatever: here's your piece of paper, read it.
2) paper is durable and fixed-format: if I put a paper in a file and come back 10 or even 100 years later, barring catastrophe, it'll still be there. The vagaries of non-cloud storage, and (for the cloud) the evolution of estorage and edoc formats means that even if I HAVE the file, i might not be able to read/open it. Shit, I have enough trouble opening now 25 year old docs from my college days plunking on a MacSE.
3) it's harder to edit paper: simply put, edocs are easier to fake, generally.
There are a host of things that paper isn't: searchable, stored effortlessly taking no space, easily (instantly) sent to someone else not present, backed up in case of loss, there are probably a ton of others. But the fact is that for what paper does, and what's important in a business/legal context, it's pretty irreplaceable.
-Styopa
People in their 20's don't seem to have much use for hardcopy.
Which is why, when their phone dies or they can't get a connection, they can't figure out how to read a paper map.
Yes, yes, we're talking about offices but the point stands. Instead of having a physical piece of paper in ones hand which can be immediately shown with others, we have to wait while these folks hunt through their phone or computer to pull up a document on a small screen. It's also easier to read a paper document than on a screen.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Too many people who need to print out the Excel sheet, add the numbers on a desk calculator, fax it somewhere where it arrives as a over email PDF, print out that PDF so it can be faxed somewhere else to get it to someone who needs it.
And what do I mean by that? Here's how I see it (and I work in advertisement were we use paper more than most companies):
The newspapers (physical format) is struggling like mad, it's dying a hard slow death that the editors and older people desperately tries to fight rather than deny. Deny it - is what they tried to do 15 years ago, today they KNOW better, but really struggle with digital media. For this reason it will still live on, but only for a limited period of time (untill the old folks go to bed forever, cynical - but true).
My neighbors are roughly around 70 to 90 years old, they've lived here practically all of their lives, most of them have a computer but they confess they rarely use it, they basically use it to read mails from their kids and pay bills via online banking because they are too old and tired to go to the bank physically, if they had an alternative (someone drove them) they'd prefer that (yes, I'm basically the neighborhood IT guy so I hear them!).
Personally I absolutely HATE my physical mailbox. There are basically TWO things I find in there, one is more overpowering than the other and needs constant attention, namely ADVERTISEMENT in paper form. For me, they usually go directly from the mailbox to the paper-recycling dumpster can we have, I don't even bother to read them, they are more a nuisance than practical. But the OLD people love them, it's basically their only source of information (and I kid you not!).
At work we sometimes print copies because in advertisement we NEED to see if the ads look good on print, this is proofing and we can't really do without that process. But we use as little paper as we have to, the boss hate wasting print colour and paper, and we don't like the manual handling of the endless paper mountains either, so the less - the better.
At home I like to decorate the walls with my own printout collages of the 80s memorabilia, cartoons and video games, so it's basically used as a decorative wallpaper printer for me, other than that - I rarely if ever print anything. In fact...I print so little, that my Hewlett Packard color laser printer 2600n has only had ONE set of cartridges in it since I bought it 10 years ago, and gathers dust under a chair somewhere in the hall, I take it out if I need to send some hardcopy to the government (who are still super-old-fashioned in Sweden and wants everything in hardcopy prints).
I sometimes work for the school system as a substitute teacher when I'm out of graphics jobs at work, and at school we use the copier heavily, it gets a run all day long, that's because the teachers are in love with giving kids assignements on paper since it basically keeps them occupied all the time. This ain't going away anytime soon either.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
I've been working in a paperless office for 6 years now. I don't even bother with scratch notes anymore, just OneNote and/or a whiteboard + phone camera
Our fax/printer has been out of toner for 2 years... and so far nobody has needed it (out of ~20 people)
The only paper product we get anymore is the crap that comes in the mail slot we throw out... I don't even think about it anymore. Which is odd really, place I worked at before generated mountains of paper (even for scrum, we were using cardstock and pins on a cube wall rather than an app, g'gah, how did we even generate reports back then???)
Anyway, the only thing I miss is doodling I guess.
crazy dynamite monkey
I just got on line after going to the local office supply store for another ream of printer paper.
I work with quite a few people who "need" to print things every day.
First of all, the vast majority of things they print don't require printing in the first place. As an almost stereotypical example, we have one lady who:
* Prints out every PO (that she creates in our ERP system) and puts it in filing cabinet #1.
* When she gets a packing slip, she manually matches them up, staples them together, moves them to cabinet #2, then records the PO as received in the ERP.
* Then when the invoice comes... Ditto, cabinet 3 (if she receives it by email, she actually prints that so she can physically staple them together).
* When she sends payment to the vendor... cabinet 4.
* Finally, when the payment clears, she stamps it as processed and files it away forever in the dungeon, "just in case" she needs to reference it sometime in 2046.
I've tried explaining that she can run a recon right in the ERP for every single phase of that, including attaching emails/PDFs/whatever directly to the workflow, but she doesn't "trust" the computer (aka "once upon a time I screwed up and deleted something, so I'll just do the whole damned thing by hand until the end of time").
Second, also related to trusting computers - I've shown people how to print to PDF. Nope, computer might crash (mind you, we have reliable offsite backups going back to the frickin' 1980s).
Finally, people seem to have a disconnect between the idea of computer files vs paper files. How could they ever find that one invoice among thousands of PDFs? Because y'know, you can't just organize them exactly the same way you do paper files, never mind the fact that you can just search for any bit of text in the document and almost instantly find every reference to WidgetCo going back to the beginning of time.
The paperless office will eventually exist. It just won't arrive until the Boomers and their hatred of trees finally gets the hell out of the workforce.
Jevons' paradox says that this is exactly what will happen. You make it easier to produce documents by digital means? More (not less) paper will be used.
Ezekiel 23:20
also paper works when the power it out.
One more article that poses a false dichotomy. It's not a binary either or. No office or worker can exist in an absolute paperless existence. Even the "paperless office" has to let paper in the door, has to scan it or OCR it for digital retention. And when the power goes out, paper will pop up as a pretty workable temporary fallback *tool*.
And that gets me to the second point, that getting stuck in the "either / or" binary means one stops asking what is the best tool for the job. I try to print out as little as I can. Most things stay digital - until I start designing things or need to jot stuff down super quick. When I'm designing from scratch, trying to structure things, loads of cheeeep paper and good marking tools blow the doors off of digital tools. I can rough out the general structure of anything from a landscape design to a database schema, on paper, faster and better than I can click.
But not everything starts best analog. Most long form writing seems better for me to start and stay digital. I can think and edit text better and faster on screen. For me the real question is what tool is best for a given task, *for a particular person or organization*?
Don't step on the baby.
Maybe someday we can finally get rid of fax machines.
Good luck. The legal profession (and extensions of them, such as courts, mortgage brokers, etc) refuse to move on from them. And the medical profession to a lesser extent.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
My co-worker (in our in-house printshop) once told me, "I love the paperless society. I've never been busier".
Having been in the web industry for 15 years now, working for 3 different 4000+ employee companies, I've seen several attempts to "go digital".
In each project, I warn the C*O that success of the project does not rely on million-dollar document management software or high-speed scanners, but on creating original documents that are easy to read/understand online.
And I am ignored. And I watch the project fail.
Online reading (reality is: "online scanning") is a whole new world to the office. It's a huge-culture change that needs to happen.
We've all been taught to write the hamburger essay. That doesn't work online. Online requires getting to the point quickly, chunking information with headlines, short paragraphs.
-- If you don't create documents that are easy to consume online, then people will print them off to read them --
Another important success factor: a robust search engine and proper architecture. Again, more things that are ignored and not taught to make paperless a reality. The whole self-service "everyone can add their own document" feature is a horrible idea. Dedicate a resource to manage search and navigation of your document repositories.
One of my customers has reduced their printing by ~90% by simply requiring a badge-swipe at the printer to actually print their documents and using reporting to work with heavy printer users to reduce their usage. When the user knows that their usage is being monitored they start to ask "Do I really need to print this?" Most of the time the answer is no. Paper records are still kept where required, but all those transient documents that everyone printed out of habit dropped off drastically. This allowed the company to reduce their printer count, reduce consumables costs, reduce maintenance costs, reduce document disposal costs, and increased security (the custom deals with a lot of sensitive financial information, so reduced printing reduced the effort required to make sure users disposed of their documents correctly and reduced the chances that a document with sensitive information ended up in a dumpster and not a shredder truck).
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Then look at the people who print out a document, redline it with a pen, then type the redlines into the softcopy file they just printed out.
This is a valid use case.
Proofing on paper is vastly different than proofing on the screen, especially if for something that is final output to paper.
You're not only looking at spelling, grammar, word choice, etc. you're looking at layout, font, flow, margining, and all the other things that go into it. Add to that the tactile response of a good pen...
Yes you could use a stylus and tablet... but it's not the same. Eye fatigue is higher with screens as well.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Remember that shot in "Avatar" where a guy makes a vague gesture of waving a document from his desktop screen and towards a pad in his hand, and the document does exactly that? Those folks have finally replaced paper - not because of that one thing, but because it implies a document is always with you, effortlessly and seamlessly.
It goes much further than that. Paper documents you've printed off and carry with you can be *found* in a couple of seconds. During a meeting if you say, "I've got it right here"...and more than about four seconds elapse before you are showing that document or reading aloud from it, the conversation moves on past you. And it takes more than four seconds to find a document in a file system; less than four to shuffle through up to several pieces of paper (we can hold up to seven things in mental RAM, remember) and pull something out. So printing something serves as a proxy for making it more accessible.
At the moment, if you want to share that electronic document, you go through multiple steps, again breaking up a conversational flow - or it's impossible because your pad is Android and their's is iPad, or something. Or your meeting guest isn't on the corporate LAN. But if the guest brings six copies on paper, the sharing is accomplished in 15 seconds of passing-around-the-room.
Most printing I saw in the last few years related to meetings and passing out copies; or it was training materials. When you make a vague gesture waving the document on your pad to all the other pads in the room, and "it just works", a lot of modern printing needs will go away. When everything is searchable as quickly and quietly shuffling through some paper with half an eye while staying in a conversation, more will go away.
The problems will be solved one at a time. What people still haven't absorbed about computer use is the UI dictum that a four-second delay causes loss of focus and an eight-second delay starts the user off on different tasks - in a meeting, task #1 is to pay attention to the meeting, so the job of the pad simply doesn't get done and paper is brought next time. After we finally get sub-second, or at least less than 4-second solutions to all the things that paper is good at, use will finally decline. Sail had a long overlap with steam, too.
1) In an office situation the same can be true of any IT solution. If your tablet is always close by and your WiFi is always on, and ... wtf do you mean by turn on a laptop? These devices are always on. In the wider sense what you say is true but in a controlled environment I can take my note and send it to you faster than you can come and get a sheet of paper from my desk.
2) A grand problem in the office is not the storage of paper, but the lack of storage for it. There are very few documents that need to be stored 10 or 100 years and if they do need to be stored like that then some cloud provider is not the place for it. I remember last time I changed jobs I filled up a large wheely-bin with worthless accumulated shit. The stuff I handed over suffered from a typical non-searchable poorly archived problem that is paper. My online stuff on the other hand was easier I just dragged and dropped everything to a folder and handed it to my successor. If he needs something he can search it. The same is true for many note-taking programs now. It's delusional to think that anything short of critical drawings or design plans will be worth anything in even 5 years let alone longer.
3) Not even many government agencies require originals anymore. Paper is just as easy to fake as any other document. The benefit of having a digital copy though is having a document management system with versioning. When everyone can always get a previous edit of a document, THAT is hard to fake. Paper is just easy.
But the fact is that for what paper does, and what's important in a business/legal context, it's pretty irreplaceable.
I work in a paperless office (engineering). My friend works in a paperless office (accounting). Sure there may be some fields that can't go paperless, but for most jobs paper can easily not only be replaced but you can gain major inefficiencies in doing so. However you can't half-arse it. Shoehorning an electronic system into a company that thrives on wet signatures and notepads and telling employees to make do with their existing hardware and software is never going to work. Going paperless needs to be thought through.
"The only reason that you can't open 25 year old documents is because you saved them in a proprietary format."
When I wrote that, I knew someone would try to dispute that. Sure, *.txt, woo.
Documents are about more than just text. I can't think of a common documentary format from 30 years ago that will support: ...and still be commonly readable today.
- embedded graphics
- tables
- complicated formatting - footnotes, etc.
For a piece of paper, it's not even a question.
PS, EPS, PDF, TIFF, JPEG, TXT, CSV, CSV
Yes TIFF and JPEG are image formats and marking them up has the same effect as writing with a pen on a document totay.
We didn't have much choice since we are dealing in times where the technology was not fully developed they did/do a better job of representing the printed word better than most new formats of today (saving a print file for an Epson printer will not print on a Brother unless you use a supported format which is what I'm saying). Saving a PS will print on any PS capable printer. My other comment was down moderated which to me is stupid since I have files that are from the 80's and 90's and they can still be printed today as they were back then. The printer at the time had the font and once set it would print in that font.
Today we have those plus ODT, ODS, and many others that are completely published and open. If you care to keep the work you do and don't wish to rely on one specific organization for your documents inform yourself.
I am not saying that it's better than paper. I'm just saying that if you wanted you could and you can.
As for paper if it is not taken care of then it too disappears. I can no longer find my kids pictures with Santa from 10 years ago. Documents become brittle if not kept in a proper place. They discolor if they are not protected from the light. If the paper is not intended for archiving it may just fall apart.
Moderators can mod me down all they want it won't change the fact that I do have old digital and paper documents which I can still read today.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...